Swords Into Plowshares: A Brief Reflection

I began reading Daniel Berrigan’s commentary on Isaiah this past week. My hope is that I will find spiritual sustenance for the long hall in the fight for true freedom and democracy. Hopefully Fr Berrigan will also give me inspiration as I find ways to be a counter-cultural witness in the midst of the mess that is this country and government.

It is personal for me. This corrupt regime has attacked the state I was born in (California), the country that was my late Mom’s home and native land (Canada), and now the state (Minnesota) where my parents raised me! Minnesota was where my Mom became a US citizen by giving up her own lifelong Canadian citizenship, and where I went to seminary and served as a pastor for three years before going into full-time ministry with the Air Force. It was in Minneapolis, during my second year of seminary, where I first raised my right hand and swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic as a Chaplain Candidate, Second Lieutenant.

The illegal, immoral, unethical, and frankly un-constitutional actions of ICE, CBP, and DHS along with the other abominable actions by the so-called Department of “War” have been absolutely devastating. When you protest this administration in Mobile, Alabama as we have, you quickly realize that you are in a distinct minority. Either through the silence of complicity or the loud voice of support for this administration, it can really feel like you are all alone. With all of that in mind, I hope and pray that you, dear reader, will find inspiration for the living of these days and making a difference in ways large and small.

Over against those who would separate the pastoral from the prophetic, I offer here an exercise in pastoral prophecy. Isaiah and his school would have us read aright the signs of the times and, in the light thus gained, would urge us to render judgment on the times. The prophetic-pastoral concern permeates the book of Isaiah with moral clear-sightedness and courage under the threat of disaster…. (Isaiah: Spirit of Courage, Gift of Tears, p. 1)

From Isaiah’s time to ours and in every year in between, there has been war—a continuum of war with the swagger and braggadocio of the powers of death, declaring themselves the molders of human fate, the giver of all good. In their wake is a procession of of slaves and loot—and the dead…. (p. 2)

Isaiah lived in a time of whetted swords and rusted plowshares, of immense violence and social conflict and neglect of the poor. Then the oracle came to him—swords into plowshares! What does Isaiah have to say to us? (p. 4)

Isaiah and Daniel Berrigan have a lot to offer us if we will take the time to truly listen and learn. In the words of Thomas Merton who was a mentor to Fr Berrigan, Violence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us. (Thoughts in Solitude, p. 114) May we always be disturbed by violence and may we never lose our voice!